The Next Step Forward in Online Mapping

I've been using Google Maps for some time but read an article which said that Yahoo Maps had leapfrogged ahead. So I decided to give it a try.

There are definitely some subtle but important improvements. The real-time drag & drop scrolling is much better. Google used to be the king in this area but it has really slowed down over time. There's now a significant lag time, perhaps because of its popularity - too many users hitting the servers at once.

Yahoo has introduced a live traffic feature in some cities, offering very detailed reports seemingly direct from the computers of the police! This would be useful for commuters about to venture out or drivers with mobile computers in their cars. The technology behind all this merging of data is actually quite straightforward but the politics behind gathering all of the disparate data is what has taken so long to make happen.

In the future, I look forward to real-time video streaming from highway cameras direct to the mobile computers in the cars!!!